Black Project Spontaneous & Wild Ales will release “STARGATE: Peach Rye | Nectarine Bourbon” on January 12, 2018 to a select group of lottery winners that will be picked randomly from entries submitted online.

STARGATE: Peach Rye | Nectarine Bourbon is the latest release from the brewery’s “PROJECT: STARGATE”, which highlights different flavors and aromas of whole fruit fermented and aged in spirit barrels, which are filled with the brewery’s spontaneous solera sour golden “DREAMLAND”. Each year the brewery picks different fruits and spirit barrels, depending on the season, to age their sour golden for several months, imparting unique flavors and aromas into the base beer.

In 2016, STARGATE debuted as “DREAMLAND: Peach Rye”, a spontaneous sour golden aged in Law’s Whiskey House Rye Whiskey barrels and refermented with whole peaches from Palisade, Colorado. That same year, DRAFT Magazine named the beer among the “Top 25 beers of 2016” and PorchDrinking.com which declared STARGATE as one of the “Best Beers of 2016”. The beer was later renamed to avoid confusion.

One year later, STARGATE was re-released to a long line of customers that extended down the street. Unfortunately, several cases were over-carbonated, which lead to canceling the release and recalling all bottles. After a few weeks of testing, Black Project discovered that the issue related to residual complex sugars in the bottles. The brewery decided to fix the problem by opening all overcarbed bottles and refermented the beer on more peaches, repackaged it, and re-release it at no additional cost to everyone that waited in line, creating the now legendary: STARGATE².

That is why this year, Black Project wanted to do something special by releasing the first double barrel blend of STARGATE. This beer combines Laws Whiskey House Rye barrel aged STARGATE with Peaches and Laws Whiskey House Bourbon barrel aged STARGATE with Nectarines together, to produce “the most complex, most fruit forward, and most nuanced sour beer we have ever made.” After tasting the barrels apart and blended, James Howat (founder, brewer, and blender) found that the fruit-forward rye whiskey and bourbon whisky complemented and showcased each fruit with more depth and complexity than the individual barrels alone, combining juicy peaches with tart nectarines, which adds an incredible complexity of spice from the rye with the rich vanilla oak from the bourbon finish.

Customers that are interesting in buying a bottle, must register in advance for the online lottery by visiting the brewery’s website: blackprojectbeer.com/lotterystargate before Thursday, January 4, 2018. Customers that win the online lottery will have a week to pre-purchase bottles for $22/bottle – 500mL bottle, cork and cap.

Black Project Spontaneous & Wild Ales is announcing ROSWELL, a once per year bottle release party spanning two days, July 22-23, 2017.

ROSWELL is a new series of “super-fruited” beers that are Lambic-inspired, spontaneously fermented, barrel aged, and then refermented with high levels of one of six different fruits. ROSWELL is 100% spontaneous, meaning it was cooled in a coolship overnight allowing the hot wort (unfermented beer) to collect microbes from the air. These microbes are wild yeast and bacteria, which ferment the beer and naturally sour it. ROSWELL was brewed in the fall of 2016, when Black Project expanded into their new barrel cellar, adding over 140 oak barrels, four puncheons, a small 12hL fouder, and a custom-built copper coolship.

In August 2016, Black Project took over the taproom of Former Future Brewing Company, retiring Former Future. Both businesses are owned by James and Sarah Howat, but the husband and wife team decided to focus their attention from clean ales (non-sours) like porters, cream ales, and stouts to spontaneous and wild ales, like sours, mixed-culture saisons, and Lambic or Gueuze inspired beers – a blend of one, two, and three-year-old spontaneous barrel-aged beer. While customers may think that Former Future and Black Project are two separate breweries, both breweries opened on January 1, 2014 and used the same brewing system. Black Project beers were originally cooled on the roof of the building using two 2BBL / 60gal stock pots and then the beer was fermented in barrels. This kept the sour beer separate from the clean beer, preventing wild microbes from souring non-sour beer. The first Black Project spontaneous beer was brewed in late February 2014 and in August 2014, Black Project released Colorado’s first spontaneous ale, called “FLYBY”.

FLYBY went on to win a medal at the Great American Beer Festival that year. This was followed by another medal in the same category the year after. As Colorado’s only 100% spontaneous and wild brewery, every beer that’s produced by Black Project off of South Broadway in Denver, is made with only yeast from the environment, either from the air or from fruit and flowers that have been foraged. As a former microbiologist and high school science teacher, James Howat – brewer, blender, and co-owner – uses his experience and background to create a one of a kind beer that cannot be replicated at any other brewery, down to the individual cell.

This release of ROSWELL follows the brewery’s mission to “innovate in the research and development of spontaneous fermentation” and was created to showcase a concept they call “super-fruiting”, where the brewery uses as much fruit as possible, while still calling it a beer.

ROSWELL is made once per year during the late spring from a Lambic-inspired wort that was brewed earlier that fall. This gives the beer a depth of flavor but with a lower acidity than it would have after spending a summer in the barrel – ideal considering the amount of acidity naturally present in the fruit. ROSWELL has a rich and beautiful spontaneous flavor, with a distinct funk, and complexity that stands up to and melds into the heavy amount of vibrant fruit flavor and aroma. The true wild-caught microbes mean that the beer is deliciously dry while still packing an incredible amount of fruit flavor. Flavors include apricot, blackberry, cranberry, guava, raspberry, and blueberry.

On July 22, Black Project is releasing five of the bottle variants of ROSWELL to the public with a special BrewedFood pairing of Tender Belly Bratwurst with pain de mie bun, kimchi and, gochujang mayo with a side of Hop Ash potato chips, first come first serve. Then on July 23, the brewery is hosting an exclusive, onsite only release of SIGN, the blueberry variant, with a limited preview of and upcoming Biere Brut / Biere de Champagne made with Red Fox Cellars Barbera grapes.

We feel that a journalistic organization that is partially owned by the largest commercial entity in the industry it covers is not independent, nor trustworthy as a journalistic organization.

That is why, this morning, Black Project sent the following email to RateBeer:

“Please remove “Black Project Spontaneous and Wild Ales” and “Former Future Brewing Company” as well as any mentions, logos, or labels of these breweries from your review database.

We feel that the Ratebeer.com partnership with ABInBev dba ZX constitutes a serious conflict of interest and prevents this site from acting as an independent journalistic organization.

We are withdrawing any and all permission for our names or trademarks to be used by Ratebeer.com or any of it’s affiliates.

Thank you for your help and compliance with this matter. If you wish to verify the sender, as I suspect you will, of this message before acting, please contact topsecret@blackprojectbeer.com. We are expecting a full removal from the site within 7 days unless we hear otherwise from you. Thanks again.